Rüdiger Schmidt-Grépály

Research and Academic Career

After leaving school in 1972, he studied philosophy, politics and literature in Kiel, Freiburg im Breisgau and Marburg until 1980. In 1980, he successfully completed a doctorate on the early work of Friedrich Nietzsche under the direction of Hans Heinz Holz, Gert Mattenklott and Katharina Kanthack. From 1983 to 1985, holding grants from the German Academic Exchange Service and the Italian foreign ministry, he worked in Florence with Mazzino Montinari, who was editing the first Nietzsche edition free of falsifications, based on the studies he had been carrying out in Weimar since the 1960s.
Until 1997, Schmidt-Grépály lectured in philosophy at the Universities of Florence, Kiel, Oldenburg and Bremen, then from 1998 at Jena and the Bauhaus University, Weimar. From 1989 to 1995 he was the Philosophical Director of the "Karl Jaspers Vorlesungen zu Fragen der Zeit" at the University of Oldenburg under Rudolf zur Lippe. In 1994 Schmidt-Grépály worked at Theater Bremen together with the pioneer of German dance theatre, Johannes Kresnik. He occasionally presented the radio programme "Doppel-Kopf" on hr2 for Hessischer Rundfunk in conversation with guests such as Nike Wagner, Almos Csongár and Ágnes Heller. In 1999 Schmidt-Grépály organised a Nietzsche evening in Brussels with the title "Ich bin kein Mensch, ich bin Dynamit" (Friedrich Nietzsche) as one of the official contributions by the State of Thuringia to celebrating the German Presidency of the European Union. Involved in the Nietzsche event were the actors Silvia Fink and Harald Schwaiger of the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, and Luise Härtwig, alumna of the Musikgymnasium Weimar. The play was subsequently performed in Weimar, Naumburg, Munich, Lyon and elsewhere.